


Anna Rose

by purplekitte



Category: Horus Heresy - Various Authors, Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angels of Caliban, Characters who for all intents and purposes are OCs, I headcanon Lion towards ASD in his social awkwardness, Multi, Parenthood, Relationship Negotiation, Siblings, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-15
Updated: 2017-01-15
Packaged: 2018-09-17 17:03:44
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9334460
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/purplekitte/pseuds/purplekitte
Summary: He didn’t want to think of his wife, not now. She had died during the birth of their first child, along with their daughter, just two years after their nupitals. Half a year later, Luther had stumbled upon a feral boy in the forest. What might have happened, had the Lion been raised with a mother and sister? Possibility. They had plagued his thoughts of late.





	

‘Why is she crying?’ the boy asked. The wild boy Luther had brought home was intense. He hadn’t spoken for a long time, but when he had started it had been in full sentences. It made it difficult to judge his age, his origin, his intent.

‘Because she’s unhappy,’ Fyona told him patiently.

‘But why? Her diaper’s dry, she ate, she had her nap, she’s not cold...’ He looked to her for answers with complete loss that the list he’d been given was not producing results.

‘Lion, child, sometimes babies cry for no reason anyone else can figure out. You know the important thing?’

‘No.’

‘That even if you don’t know why someone’s crying, you try to make it better. You keep trying until they stop. Okay?’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ The Lion nodded solemnly, like he was making an oath. He looked less pained for it, his inability to understand no longer weighing on him. If he could only make his baby sister stop crying, then it didn’t matter what he was or what set him apart from all other men.

‘Hold her closer to your chest, yes, like that. Do you know any lullabies? I’ll teach you one she likes.’

The boy had a voice that could break hearts and leave a soul shaken and quiet a crying child.

*

The Lion was taller than Luther now, Fyona noted as she made a mark on the wall. Lyssa toddled after him everywhere, and it became his reflex to snatch her out of the way of knights or from under the hooves of horses without even needing to look down. Yet, while he could be callous at times, when he wasn’t thinking of it, at others he doted on her. If he goal was to make her smile, he would win.

‘He hardly seems like her brother,’ Luther commented.

‘More like her father?’ She asked, because she knew her Luther. ‘My dear, he is not our son. We did not have the measure of him. If he is your brother, then a good brother he has grown to be. He’s still our family.’

‘I suppose you’re right. I have nothing to regret. He is a great man. Greater than I, I warrant.’

‘Luther.’

‘I expect he’ll outgrow more than my armour soon.’

‘We’ll make a bigger space for him, then. Hearts grow. If he is a giant, or a forest spirit, or a lord of lords, we’ll make room for him.’

‘I’m glad he has you, and her. I’m grateful to be beside him too. He’s as lost as we are, I know, and unsure of his place. If I could give him everything, well... I want to.’

*

It was up in the air who would crack first.

Would it be the Lion? He didn’t understand people, and it scared him to think that others might understand him better than he did himself, so better that they knew nothing. But he was good with Lyssa, and she with him, and the way he glanced at Luther out of the corner of his eye when she asked if she should say he was her big brother or her uncle or her other father spoke volumes to Fyona. He wanted to make the people close to him happy, he had been taught that was what you did, but he didn’t know how.

Would it be Luther? He was no liar, but there was a tension in him, of knowing that where he stood was not quite where it should be. He supported the Lion, put him forward, talked with him for hours about the Great Hunt or explained to obvious things about knights they’d known for years without shaming the Lion for not having noticed them. But sometimes he stared at him behind his back with all sorts of things he’d never said aloud.

Would it be Fyona herself? She knew. Whether it was too much or not enough that she knew, only time would tell. She saw the bounds between them and the shadows, and wondered how much they understood it. She saw how Luther looked between her and the Lion, how his daze darkened then. It was so much more complicated to see when she was too close. She knew her own heart, but not the Lion’s in this regard and she feared for all of them if they got this wrong. It couldn’t last like this forever, that much was sure.

‘I couldn’t blame you,’ Luther told her. ‘He is beautiful, glorious, the strongest knight and the greatest leader Caliban has ever known. How could you not love him?’

‘Do you think I’d rather him for a husband than you?’

‘How could you not?’

‘You say that because you love him too.’

Luther closed his eyes, pained by his admission and her implied one. ‘I wish you two the best. I intend to turn mastery of the Order over to him. Do not feel bound by our vows made before he came among us. There’s always divorce. You, like the Order, can do better now, and I’ll step aside.’

‘You fool,’ she told her husband affectionately. ‘I do love him, but I have never stopped loving you. He is great, but you are no less for it in my eyes. I do not know if he loves me, but I know he loves you. You love him, it’s plain as day. I’m the one who would give you my blessing to do together in the forest anything knights might do in the forest when wives aren’t around to see, if it made you happy.’

‘Fyona, I...’ He embraced her, warm, awed, desperate. ‘I don’t want to lose either of you.’

‘Nor do I. Be patient, my love. We’re family, all of us. We’ll figure something out if we don’t forget that. Think of this as a quest, and remember you’re the best tacticians on all Caliban.’

*

Lyssa had little interest in knights, and laughed at the Lion when he asked her if she wanted to be one, but horses were a different matter. Lion would need a good horse to carry someone as heavy as him, she teased, but she took it seriously. He would need one to stay side by side with Father. If that meant spending all night in the stables with a mare that might foal at any moment, then she would, and she was hardly too young for the responsibility by the harsh ways of Caliban.

Raising a child meant rarely getting a house to yourself. Fyona regretted sometimes the difficult childbirth that had meant no more children after her firstborn, but at least with one rather than a whole brood you knew you’d have some privacy when you knew where she was.

Fyona kissed the Lion’s shoulder, charmed by how he shut his eyes and bit his lip to try to keep control. Luther was not so otherworldly as he, but he looked beautiful too as they moved together. He didn’t seek to hurt his dearest brother, but he held nothing back, giving him everything he could in the hope of being enough for him.

The Lion couldn’t do that--he had learned all his life, from when he had first come into their home, how to be careful with fragile things and fragile people, to bring joy not hurt, and it was too hard a habit to break. So they learned to make do: heavy chains and solid stone anchoring to hold his hands, touching him even if he could not touch them with abandon, bringing him to the edge slowly but surely until he could come apart between them. They’d had the years of making sure there would be no other children to learn other ways to please each other, and the Lion was only a new challenge.

The Lion arched his back as Luther found just the right angle inside him, and shuddered at Fyona’s kisses on his throat. He was too much a man who hunted beasts to not react to teeth against his neck, teeth that could come away red and leave him bleeding out, but that was his gift to them: this vulnerability. That was what you did for people you loved: you gave them everything and left yourself open to be hurt. But you did it, because you didn’t want to see them cry, and trusted they felt the same for you, even if you had to do it blindly.

The Lion whimpered, pleas he’d never put into words on his tongue, and Fyona kissed him and spoke words of affection in his ear. He strained against his bonds, not truly trying to break them, but a body that knew how to respond warring with a mind that did not. If he had no words to return, he could at least whisper their names in awe and reverence for these feelings they brought up in him. They felt like drowning, but he’d been told were called love.

*

It would have surprised most of those who’d met the Lion to see the techpriest run into him without pause, and even more that his features broke into a slight smile rather than his usual brooding lack of facial expression.

The red hood had fallen back to reveal a young, dark-haired woman, still mostly human other than the mechandrites coming from her back. ‘Lion!’

‘Lyssa,’ he said, meeting her embrace and sweeping her up in his arms. ‘Little sister.’

‘Father told me what those melta bombs did to your Land Raider. I saw the mess the poor tank was in. Are you alright?’

‘Perfectly fine. It would take more than that to injure a primarch.’

‘Promise?’

‘I promise. I had Luther at my side. The xenos had no hope of victory.’ She nodded, accepting that. The Lion might not understand her need for reassurance after he’d been in battle, but it was a familiar ritual. If this was what his baby sister needed to not fret, then he would do it for her. ‘The Apothecaries have already checked me over. See to the Land Raiders, sister. The sooner they’re in working order, the sooner my Angels can take to the field again.’

She nodded again and remembered to make the sign of the aquila before fluttering off to minister to the poor machine-spirits. The Lion watched her go before he turned back to his duties and hid the smile away.


End file.
